Abstract

A multi-regional dynamic computable general equilibrium model is constructed in this paper to explore the macroeconomic effects of international oil price shocks and RMB exchange rate changes on China. The results show that (1) in terms of regional development differences, the decrease in international oil prices and depreciation of RMB are both conducive to economic growth, although the impact of RMB devaluation is more obvious. Increases in international oil prices will further widen the output gap between the rich and the poor regions, whereas oil price decreases and RMB devaluation will narrow the regional development differences. (2) In terms of employment, the depreciation of the exchange rate and the decline in international oil prices will help increase the employment rate in most regions, but oil price hikes will be most beneficial for improving oil industry employment in the northeast. (3) The impact of oil price volatility is asymmetric. Compared with rising oil prices, falling oil prices have significantly greater effects on GDP, industrial output, employment and other aspects. Furthermore, the impacts of exchange rate fluctuations and oil price changes on the regional economy exhibit a time lag.

Abstract

The recent experience during the debt and banking crises in the European Monetary Union (EMU) has demonstrated how important it is to consider liquidity (or rather the lack therof) in macroeconomics. Similar to the Fed´s policy during the US real estate crisis, the ECB took huge efforts to insert liquidity into the banking sector to prevent further financial turmoil, only to find that the transmission mechanism was severely hampered. Strong heterogeneity during the crises accentuated the difficulties of a common monetary policy. The main contribution of this paper is to show that properly measured liquidity contains substantial information on macroeconomic dynamics. Liquidity overcomes two problems of using interest rates (and interest rate spreads) as the main indicator of the monetary and financial side of the economy. First, contrary to the policy rate, they include information on the different impacts of monetary shocks between countries, thereby accounting for heterogeneity in the transmission mechanism and the different states of the banking sector. Second, (growth rates of) liquidity indicators are not subject to the zero lower bound problem and are thus particularly useful when considering samples, such as the recent crisis. We propose a range of liquidity indicators, based on Theil-Törnqvist index number, that are designed to account for measurement problems during times of financial turmoil, when liquidity preference - and thus the price of liquidity - can change quickly. We then study the information content of those variables.